


Twining, Pining

by Path



Category: The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2019-01-19 17:58:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12415089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Path/pseuds/Path
Summary: Avris does His Serenity's hair... at least, when he isn't distracted by a handsome nohecharis.





	Twining, Pining

**Author's Note:**

> thanks ship generator

Avris combs His Serenity’s hair, morning and night. Esha and Nemer have their own specialties, but Avris has deft fingers for twists and braids and beading. The other two choose clothing and scents, and together they all coordinate for jewellery. The responsibility of it is overwhelming when Avris considers it; the Emperor’s appearance in his hands. If he were ever to appear less than perfect, it would be he and Nemer and Esha to blame. He is not afraid- the three of them do excellent work- but he does not forget it.

Earlier, Esha and Nemer bathed His Serenity and washed his hair, and now Avris brushes it, smoothing the wet curls and working in an apricot cream to make the morning easier. When Avris learned to style hair, it was not on any head like the Emperor’s, with his black curls that hate to lie flat… but he has learned quickly, and practiced on Esha and Nemer, whose hair is not so different (though they could never afford that apricot cream). Now he has the knack for it, making the Emperor’s hair lie as smooth and flat as his own.

Or at least, he does most days. Today he fumbled the ivory-handled brush when he reached for it, and used twice as much cream as was needed, having forgotten he already applied it. Nemer gives him a reproving look when he passes behind to file His Serenity’s tashin sticks, but there is no help for it. He is always so useless, when the burly soldier of the First patrols.

His name is Lieutenant Deret Beshelar, and he makes Avris’ head faint. The nohecharei and the edocharei did not get along so well at first- suspicion and nerves on both sides. But Edrehasivar’s reign has finally begun in earnest, and perhaps the hard-won peace has been kind to them all. The nohecharei never cease to examine the edocharei’s movements and motions, but the hard look of paranoia has ebbed into a routine familiarity. 

He has equal odds of any of the nohecharei guarding within while they work, so Avris can never predict it. Some days he plaits the Emperor’s braids under Kiru Athmaza’s cool gaze or Cala Athmaza’s absent one, and some days he beads garnet and peridot into His Serenity’s hair while Lieutenant Telimezh, with his slim hips and wide shoulders, patrols the rooms. Avris has no idea how Nemer keeps _his_ focus with the soldier of the Second in the room- just as bad as Avris himself, except that Nemer never drops anything. It is, frankly, extremely unfair, because just as many times, they work under the glare of Lieutenant Beshelar, and Avris can never keep his hands from jittering in his presence.

Of course he would be Avris’ peculiar definition of perfect- not short, exactly, but thickset enough to appear wider than he is. Avris likes to feel waifish and slender beside his partners, cherished for his prettiness and made to feel lovely. The Lieutenant is suspicious and grim, hard to please and quick to pick at details. No little bit of a temper, either; Avris has heard him arguing in the hall with Cala Athmaza. The man is not lovely, but Avris finds him horribly enchanting.

Worse than the nerves he gets in the Lieutenant’s presence is his fluttering mind, though. The other day when they prepared His Serenity for the Embassy dinner, Avris found himself daydreaming, and almost strung the Emperor’s twists with opal, instead of the malachite they’d already agreed on. He was thinking of thick-fingered hands on his waist, pulling him close, he was thinking of late-day stubble roughing his cheek. He painstakingly redid a failed twist, one-two-three, bead, one-two-three, bead, and he thought of those hands on his shoulders, in his hair, and of the Lieutenant’s low voice muttering some grudgingly-admitted desire... He loosened the plait up to the last bead for the third time.

“We run out of time to arrive early,” he heard the Lieutenant remark to Cala Athmaza, who poked his head in from the hall.

Nemer had elbowed Avris in the ribs then. “They are running out of time,” he murmured, so low that even the Emperor might not hear them. “Whatever _could_ the holdup be?”

Nemer knows, of course. It is impossible to keep anything from him. And Esha knows because Nemer does, or maybe because Avris is just that obvious about it. At least His Serenity didn’t seem to notice. And at least the soldier passed by on another loop, with no glare or questions that Avris would have to stammer through responding to.

He thinks of that too, sometime. The nohecharis might know them now, but that doesn’t mean they might not yet be swayed by the enemies of the throne. Lieutenant Beshelar watches them still, watches what they take from the cabinets in the bathroom and the storage in the wall. Sometimes Avris thinks of his hands against the wall in the hallway, the Lieutenant’s hands swift and purposeful as he searches Avris for weapons. And then, the wideset Lieutenant pushing him back into the wall, body flush against Avris’, and lips rough against his…

 _Oh drat, the combing_ , he thinks. How long has he gone on for? With quick hands, he wraps His Serenity’s hair into a smooth braid for sleep. Esha has vanished for the night already, and Nemer tosses him an impatient glance when he thinks the Emperor isn’t watching. They ensure he is safely to bed, and retire for their own, and Nemer only rolls his eyes at Avris before they part for the night.

Avris undoes his own hair when he gets back. He has no mirror, but he needs nothing; he only lets out the restraining, tiny braids he did long before dawn, and combs his own hair into a braid, though unlike the Emperor’s, Avris’ is smooth and pale, and obedient to boot. He dons his nightshirt, and lies in bed. Tomorrow he will rise early and do his own hair swiftly from memory, and then the Emperor’s painstakingly before the mirrors. 

He comes to bed late and rises before the sun, and sleeps better in the day, during court and His Serenity’s appointments. But even still he lies awake a long time, thinking about the casual strength of a wide-built soldier, and the sword-callous roughness of his hands.


End file.
